But quite a lot "science" can not verified in the same manner as some physics, math, chemistry and biology can.
And to go from the fact that some science is verifiable and then conclude that everything which tries to take on the label science or follow similar rituals to the verifiable sciences, also deserves the same respect is quite a long jump.
In fact "science" or scientism seems to be one of the more dangerous religions nowadays, as the rituals of peer-review, papers and conferences, holy institutions like universities and sacraments of tenure and ph.d are very easy to adopt without being even remotely verifiable (or even slightly rational).
sometimes, this evidence is just subjective, at other times, it is clear and can be measured.
Another analogy that I have heard is that 'magic' is when one is just wowed by what they see without being able to understand how it happens. Apple products bring that 'magic' though it can all be explained away in technical terms if one tried.
Soon our bodies will go back to the dust that we began as:)
-this ‘Universe’ (seems to me) is so incredibly intelligible and information rich (information theory rise, e.g. entropy timeline of the observable universe).
-there seems to be something rather than nothing
-there doesn’t seem to be anything that happens without a cause (except, it seems to me, our will).
These seem to be important data points… :)
1. Your brain/body evolved to interpret this richness in a universe that is unintelligible to us a conscious brain that evolved in that universe would almost certainly view those unintelligible to us rules as intelligible lest there be no purpose to that consciousness. Our brains also quite demonstrably processes unintelligible (to us) things as intelligible when they are not.
2. This is true in any universe where someone is around to point out that something exists and is a priori with or without creator beings.
3. Our will is either deterministic (happens with a cause) or it is not. In the case that it is deterministic we can ignore this example (which personally is my view). In the case it is not then the non deterministic part is reduced to the result of quantum coin flips altering the result in the larger scale world. Assuming so there are two possibilities either everything else is also happening at that level without a cause (which is counter to your point that it is only will that behaves this way) or the quantum coin flips are in some way deterministic which means so is will.
There is a lot of work in the social sciences showing that whether one asserts there is free will or not (as you allude to) is correlated heavily towards belief in God.
If there is no free will, it is interesting that the universal laws of Physics would create clouds of atoms that assert there is a God :)
For those that have them, yes. Not all institutions that are called "scientific" have them, though.
> and how their construction promotes future successes.
For those for which this is true, yes. It's not true for all institutions that are called "scientific".
> Scientific institutions are also constrained in their function.
I'm not sure how true this actually is. Top tier universities like Harvard call themselves "scientific institutions", but they're really just hedge funds that happen to do research and teaching as a side gig. And the fact that almost all university research is funded by governments means that along with the expansion of government into more and more areas of our lives, comes the expansion of what is called "scientific" for purposes of getting government funding.
GANs and other deep fakes are going to be weaponized and absolutely obliterate the foundations of this country if that trust in legitimate journalism cannot be adequately restored in time. All journalism is biased, but we're not talking about bias; we're talking about up is down.
Very soon literally anyone can be shown saying anything… to anyone else… anywhere… wearing anything (or nothing)… with resources akin to a typical gaming computer. As a nation, we are woefully unprepared for that day, and we will pay dearly for that lack of preparation.
No, often justifiably. If the media didn't lie so often and so consistently, they wouldn't have a problem rebutting accusations of lying.
> without specifying what other institutions or processes can be trusted instead for reliable information
That's the problem: there aren't any. Our society has no institutions that can be trusted for reliable information.
PBS News Hour Frontline Reuters BBC News NPR's morning and evening news Associated Press
Then papers of record (excluding editorial column or op-ed):
Washington Post Chicago Tribune Miami Herald etc.
Please provide specific examples of their lies. I'll even take honest errors that never received a retraction.
Move on to more opinion-based outlets like:
The Hill The Atlantic Pro Publica Mother Jones
In these, provide examples where what's written goes beyond bias or persuasion into "lie" territory.
While we're here, show where dedicated fact checkers like FactCheck.org have lied or omitted their sources so as to prevent outside verification.
Even Fox News rarely if ever lies. Biased as all hell, but no outright lies at the main news desk. Their opinion shows on the channel on the other hand, it's hard to find an honest hour among them.
And local NBC, CBS, and ABC affiliates? Yeah, I'm gonna need some specific examples where they regularly lie to the American public beyond, "They were mean to Trump."
If you honestly can't come up with a mountain of evidence on your own, then either you have not been paying attention at all, or we live on different planets. Or you have simply not bothered to independently check anything they say. (More on what "independently" means below.)
And if you honestly believe that the sources you cite (and yes, I'm talking about what is billed as straight "news", not opinion) are reliable, then good luck with that. I hope for your sake that it doesn't catch up with you at some point, but I won't be holding my breath.
And btw, my claim is not that everything they say is lies. Much of what they say is true. The problem is that you can't trust them not to lie; given any statement they make, you have to consult independent information (more on that below) to decide whether you can trust it or not. And the more politically charged the topic--in other words, the more that is at stake in terms of power--the less you can trust them not to lie. Whenever the chips are down, they have shown that they will put ideology and spin, to protect their own power and the power of those in government whom they agree with, above truth.
As far as independently checking what they say is concerned, that's the problem I referred to in the GP: there are no "independent" reliable sources you can use. You have to do it entirely on your own, cobbling together what information you can from as close to primary sources as you can get it. (For example, whenever I see, say, a report issued by a government agency, or a scientific paper, mentioned in the media, I don't even bother reading the media article; I go looking for the actual report or paper itself and read that. The report or paper might still be telling me things that are questionable, but at least I'm reading the primary source.) And of course most people don't have the time or the wherewithal to do that, which is why this terrible state of affairs persists. But that doesn't make it any less terrible. At least now, with the Internet, with so many ways for people to post first-hand information about things, we have some ability to collect our own data instead of having to live with whatever the media gives us. We used to have none at all, except for the rare cases where either we ourselves were first-hand witnesses to some event (and btw, pretty much anyone who has had first-hand knowledge of something that got covered in the media will tell you that the media account was nothing at all like what they saw first-hand), or we knew personally someone who was and could evaluate what they told us based on our knowledge of their past track record of reliability.
You made the claim. Now prove it. My claim is that these news outlets are on the up and up. I have listed the ones I trust.
Don't just say, "They all lie." That's lazy and disingenuous. Put up just a single example of a lie, and I'll be listening to your side of things. Otherwise you're just the crazy guy on the corner with the tin foil hat talking about lizard people. "You can't trust anyone" sounds conspicuously paranoid.
Evidence matters.
NPR, Washington Post, NY Times, CNN, etc etc "independently confirmed" that Trump had protestors gassed to stage a photo op [1], that the officer in DC was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher [2], that Russia placed bounties on US soldiers [3], absolutely none of which happened, as we now have proof. Few retractions were made. You absolutely cannot trust a single word coming from the media apparatus, about anything, at any point.
[1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/yet-another-media-tale-trum...
[2] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-a...
[3] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-learning-they-s...
Be a shame if his account of the tear gassing in front of the church were backed up by the pastor of said church. Except the pastor (who was also hit with the tear gas) backs up the accounts of the protestors. Protestors who were still out because the curfew had not begun yet. Details. Details. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-...
This is not to say that journalists are perfect. Far from it. They are after all human. But reputable outlets issue public corrections to errors they've made. https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-afghanista...
Looking at Sicknick's death, I see a large number of outlets all noting he died of stroke. https://www.google.com/search?q=Brian+Sicknick%27s+Death
You will hopefully note that CNN (who Greenwald calls out) is NOT on my list of credible sources. Saying that CNN is guilty of airing half-baked stories buys you little in this discussion.
I don't expect outlets to never make mistakes, but I do expect that a dozen outlets don't all independently confirm the same lie. That's not journalism, it's coordinated propaganda. And because the retraction come quietly or not at all, you'll never know if what you read was real or fake at any given moment. For that reason none of them can be trusted.
In regards to your paragraph about the tear gassing, it's quite clear you did not read the articles I posted. They were in fact gassed, but it had nothing to do with Trump or his photo op; that is the lie.
That would be a perfectly acceptable demonstration of "fake news" that would draw me in to listen to your side of things.
All it takes is a little evidence.
The argument is that individuals dont rationally objectively verify or figure out every experiment and scientific claim. I stead, we all rely on trust to institutions and processes to tell us how it is.
Which is how it is. Most people dont even know how science actually work beyond elementary school level of simplification. And even if you actually do science as a job, you know only small part of it relying on trust everywhere else.